From the workshop, Sunday afternoon #4

There's a PDF I've been requesting every couple months for the last 12 months or so.

It's a stock list from a warehouse in New South Wales. Columns of fabric codes, colours, remaining metres. I'd open it, do the arithmetic on what I could afford, and place an order. Enough to keep the oilskin range alive, but not enough to secure the future of it.

The factory that had been producing it for decades closed its doors and everything was sold by the liquidators. The remaining stock moved into a commercial warehouse along with all the equipment, some 18 semi trailers of material and machinery. Cashflow dictated how much of it I could reach. Every few months I'd send the email. Get the PDF. Look at the numbers.

Oilskin canvas is the cornerstone of Kohutt and our point of difference. I look down at the bolts under the cutting table and regularly do the math on how many bedrolls, tarps, totes and the like I can make from what's left. Wondering what comes next once it's gone. Or I make drawings on how the rollers might work to drag the basecloth through a heated oil vat. I don't have the space or resources to start manufacturing textiles, but a man can dream and draw for free.

I sent the email and committed to what was left. Relief that I'd have more material runway. Anxiety at the effect on cashflow.

They'd made an inventory error. The remaining stock had been sold as a bulk lot, likely at clearance rates to someone who probably didn't even know what it was, just to free up warehouse space. It was gone.

With thousands of rolls laying on the warehouse floor, I pushed to see if they could find even just some half bolts laying about. Anything. They did find something, in a colour called New Antique. A colour I'd never seen, never used, never ordered. There were no samples to request. No time to deliberate. I committed to it.

The pallet arrives in a couple of weeks. All 679 kilograms of the last Australian-made oilskin canvas in existence, freighted across Bass Strait at considerable cost. I still don't know exactly what New Antique looks like in quantity until I open it, but expect an email about a new colourway sometime soon..

I hope you and I both like it, or we have a problem.

Nick.